Archive for February 2011

The final seats have yet to be allocated, so I’ll be reserving my comments on this until after the last count, but at this stage we know the FPVs of each party, and I thought it might be timely to review how the different organisations (and my good self!) did in trying to gauge how many votes each party would get, that being the idea behind such polling in the first place.

Most of you will be well aware that MRBI and Millward/Lansdowne have been rubbished for some time by some FG posters on politics.ie in particular, despite having as good a record in General Elections (I’ve outlined elsewhere why I believe you can’t compare effectiveness in predicting GE results with other elections). The posters generally pointed to RedC as the most reliable, despite having no better (and arguably a worse) record in predicting GE results. This time, despite (yet again) being held closer to polling day than the other companies final pre-polling day efforts, RedC were actually the furthest out of all the respected polling companies, as I suspected they might be.

The last MRBI poll, which I flagged as the one to watch (having been extremely close in ’07), was the first of the “final” polls to be published, leaked on Sunday evening and published in Monday’s Irish Times. They were out by 0.9% for FG, 0.4% for LP, 1.4% for FF, 1.1% for SF, 0.2% for GP, and 0.4% OTH, making their total deviation a very impressive 4.4%. Millward Brown/Lansdown came out the following day and were 1.9% out for FG, 0.6% for LP, 3.4% FF, 1.1% SF, 0.8% GP and 0.6% OTH, making their deviation a less impressive (but still solid) 8.4%. The last official poll of the campaign came from RedC (as in 2007) and as in the previous GE, they failed to make this advantage work for them, with the least accurate prediction of the final vote. They were 3.9% out for FG, 1.4% for LP, 2.4% for FF, 0.1% for SF, 1.2% for GP, and 1.4% for OTH, a whopping 10.4% overall.

As regular readers will be aware, I went out on a limb and posted my predictions on polling day and my figures were out by 1.8% for FG, 0.1% for LP, 1.1% for FF, 0.1% for SF, 0.2% for GP and 0.9% for OTH, a total deviation of 4.2%. And finally, another MB/L poll, this time an exit poll for RTE, gave figures that deviated by 0% for FG, 1.1% for LP, 2.3% FF, 0.2% for SF, 0.9% for GP and 0.1% for OTH, a total deviation of 4.6%.

In summary, the total number of percentage points the last projections were out by was as follows;

MRBI 4.4%

MB/L 8.4%

RedC 10.4%

IPR 4.2%

Exit 4.6%

Now, that’s not to rubbish RedC, polling is a complicated discipline, but rather I think it does shoot the credibility of those who ridiculed the other company results, particularly people who poured scorn on MRBI for recording figures that they didn’t agree with, and who took particular exception to my basing projections on their data. MRBI by contrast were the closest of all the polls in the final week (even better than the Exit Poll) and the only prediction I’m aware of being closer was mine, which was based in large part on their poll anyway.

So next time you hear someone scorning a polling company, check who they are, who they support, and look at the evidence.

There’s about 15 partial tallies in, and while they all individually come with large health warnings, such difficulties tend to cancel one another out when you have a good spread. I’m projecting from these a likely national vote in the region of the following;

FF 17.5%

FG 35.7%

LP 20.4%

SF 8.9%

GP 2.0%

OTH 15.5%

As you can see, that’s pretty close to the exit poll, but has FF a wee bit higher, perhaps 2-2.5%. It could just be a blip, and not enough to save them from a disastrous result, but could save a few careers. I’ll do a seats projection in a bit….

RTE Exit poll from Millward Brown is out, and if accurate (they wre very accurate in 2007) it would support my argument that MRBI was closest to the money again. Vote shares (with my projections in brackets)

FF 15.1% (17)

FG 36.1% (71)

LP 20.5% (41)

SF 10.1% (12)

GP 2.7% (2)

OTH 15.5% (23)

As you can see from here that is very close to my projections from yesterday. Just a poll and all that, but still, happy enough with that….

FF rating for Dublin is apparently very low (8% if I heard correctly) but that could be the lower sample, national figure will be more reliable given the 2.5% margin of error.

Of course, a long way to go, I’ll be updating projections based on the tallies as they come in today.

I’ve sat down and come to my final conclusions, and have (somewhat foolhardily, I suppose) decided to publish them, thereby setting myself up for ridicule, given some of the 43 constituencies are likely to go very differently. As I say, it’s not a portal on the future….

My national projected vote is roughly based on the MRBI figures and the general trend, plus some adjustments to the base votes to take account of constituency polling during the campaign. While RedC had a slight increase for FG in the margin of error in their last poll, the other two companies had them flattening, and I think that’s largely what was happening at the end of the campaign. On these figures, they would be well short of the 84 everyone is talking about, and which they were tipped to achieve on RTE radio the other day. LP similarly had appeared to have stopped the rot in all the polling towards the end. Some people see an on the day problem for them based on the 2009 Local/Euro elections and Donegal SW, but in GEs they’ve generally performed as the last MRBI polls projected, and I don’t see this being too different. Locals and Euros are a very different creature, and by-elections even more so (ask Catherine Murphy), but in GEs most ppl know pretty much how they will vote.

SF I have a little down, being ‘squeezed’ as smaller parties often are at the end. FF I see making only a small recovery on the day, and not enough to push them past territory more associated with LP. I have the GP just missing out in a couple of areas, although close enough that I won’t be surprised if Trevor Sargant in particular holds on. OTHs I see taking a decent block of seats.

Summary of my prediction is as follows.

%

seats

FF

16.3%

20

FG

37.9%

73

LP

19.5%

42

GP

2.0%

0

SF

9.8%

10

oth

14.5%

21

FWIW, even including FF gene-pool, there’s only a mximum 11 “Enda-pendents”, making a FG-IND arrangement impossible without supplementary agreement from FF, who may yet find a role for themselves in the next Dail as a “loyal opposition” should negotiations on a Programme for Government break down between FG and LP.

Anways, these are my predictions – if you disagree with them, why not show me yours? 😉

I’ll be making projections tomorrow, initially based on the exit poll (on RTE sometime between 7am and 8am, but I can’t promise I’ll make it that early!) and then based on the tallies. The initial tally-based ones will be less reliable than the later ones, but if your party does better in the first 7 or 8 tallies that come in than one would expect, you can generally assume that its going to be a good day for you. Similarly, if they are all going badly ….

Anyways, enjoy the count, and who knows, we may be going this all over again in 6 months…..? 😉